New York City is a town of many faces. You never know what it has in store for you on any given day. Sometimes, on rare occasions, I fall in love with New York. On those quintessential evenings when I am walking home from work, it feels like every person on the street adds character and beauty, like a scene that someone has written just for you. It’s as if there is genuine sense of community between all the different people who live here. On Monday, I was almost sad when I reached my door, because I wanted to stay outside and soak up as much of the neighborhood as I possibly could.
Other evenings it seems as though we have all been mashed up against each other as an inhumane form of punishment, and you can’t think of a single thing you might have in common with the people walking the streets next to you. On Wednesday, after a man harassed me for taking a picture of the local barber shop, I just wanted to get home.
Most days I have some combination of both feelings. Today for example, when I overloaded my grocery bag, and sent a package of strawberry tumbling out across the street, I wanted to hug the nice people who helped me pick them back up. I also wanted to ignore my overly chatty neighbor as he tried to start a conversation with me–AGAIN–on the way up the stairs. But instead I smiled as much as I could, gave as much a response as 1 cup of coffee warrants at 11 am on Sunday, and kept hiking up the stairs to my apartment. No matter what New York offers you on any particular day, most of us would rather deal with it than live anywhere else.